


Truthfully, Once If Strangers

by dorian_burberrycanary



Series: The Matthew Goode Collection [2]
Category: Chasing Liberty (2004)
Genre: Another motorcycle ride, F/M, Fix-It, Get Together, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 01:52:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17416730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorian_burberrycanary/pseuds/dorian_burberrycanary
Summary: Anna sits on the low stone wall that edges the road and watches him wait in line. She admires how his shoulders look in the leather jacket and how his neck is lovely but so masculine, before getting distracted by his Adam’s apple, which she’d really like to skim her teeth over.





	Truthfully, Once If Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> For the most marvelous @village-skeptic, who somehow spoke this fic into being—and then beta’d it, too. We got the free real estate!

  
  


 

Anna has nothing on her mind beyond the paper on realpolitik in European history that she hasn’t even started. But as soon as she passes through the soaring stone archway onto High Street, she spots him right away, like his body is a radio station she can always instantly tune into.

He’s leaning against his bike in that worn-soft leather jacket and staring off down the street, so she gets to watch him unawares. For a moment, Anna can be simply another student in a crush of students, and she knows she isn’t the only girl to notice Ben or to think about what running her hands over his chest and shoulders would feel like.

She steps out of the crowd to stop at the edge of the sidewalk just as he glances her way and she catches the flicker of his there-and-gone smile, the one that she missed noticing for so long because his expression hardly changes. His focus stays trained on her with an intensity that makes her shiver and remember the shared sleeping bag in Austria.

(If another part of her does something undignified like give an inner victory dance—because he is _here_ and because his attention still zeroes in on her like she is the only girl on earth who matters—well, nobody has to know that. Ever.)

Anna feels daring enough to lean in to kiss him hello, light and casual in the way she’s seen other couples do but has never tried herself. She stays close to him, still touching his shoulders after the kiss is over, and with only a tiny blip of hesitation his hands settle on her hips. His thumbs sweep over the bare skin between her jeans and her t-shirt.

She likes this unfamiliar sense that it’s okay to touch him—that she doesn’t need to wonder if he is going to shy away from her or worry that he’ll need a level three security clearance before he can touch her back. His big warm hands, the way he’s leaning against the bike and how crazy aware she is of his body all add up to this urge to make out with him right here on High Street.

God, she wants to climb into his lap and _devour_ him a little.

Instead, she says, “This is a nice surprise,” chill and normal and not at all like a desperate person.

He gives her a quick lopsided grin and reaches behind him for his helmet, which he holds out to her.

“Have time for a ride?”

As her answer, she straps on the helmet with a laughing whoop, climbs onto the back of his bike and wraps her arms around him.

 

 

 

 

Despite his leather jacket and smirky grins, she has figured out that Ben is pretty much the furthest thing from a reckless driver. But the pale stone buildings around the university still blur by fast, giving way to rows of quaint shops and then big brick houses that are tucked far back from the road in a way that strikes Anna as all too familiar—and then they are out of Oxford, just like that.

Fields open out all around them, some brown and furrowed, others with the delicate spring green of new beginnings. The wind whips her hair around like mad and her cropped jean jacket isn’t really warm enough for riding. Weiss is going to be so annoyed with her for not clearing this with security first, but she can’t make herself care. 

Anna grips Ben’s waist a little tighter as the thrilling, expansive world speeds past. She tips her face up to the cobalt blue sky and lets this moment roll through her.  

 

 

 

 

She spots the cluster of green-and-white striped tents as they crest a hill and nudges Ben, yelling over the wind for them to stop. He pulls into the gravel lot that’s being used for parking, coming to rest next to a beat-up Volkswagen Bug with plastic flowers covering the bumpers. She shoves his helmet back at him to stow and then grabs his hand to see if this is a market or fair or _what_.

The tents, it turns out, are jammed full with piles of stuff in a wonderful jumble: boxes of LPs and second-hand books; patterned scarves laid out on rickety folding tables; and way, way too many silver moka pots and tea kettles clipped up to big metal racks.

A busker with an acoustic guitar plays next to his open case, singing a slow, almost mournful cover of _I Believe in a Thing Called Love_.

She whispers to Ben, “Is that brilliant or terrible?”

“Terrible. Extremely terrible.”

She shoves him a little. “You never like anything!”

Instead of replying, he stares down at her for a lingering, suspended moment that feels oddly like a kiss even though nothing happens.

They wander through the tents, which must be a local flea market. She doesn’t want to buy anything, but the quirky random assortment of junk is amusing to paw through. She puts on a battered silk top hat that is several sizes too big and manages to loop a faded red feather boa around Ben’s neck before he can step out of reach.

“You’ve finally found your look, darling,” she says with a sort-of-English-but-not accent that she’s heard in the old black-and-white movies her dad loves to watch. 

“Ah. A Rocky Horror extra. Dream come true, thanks.”

“For you? Anytime.”

But she grins when he doesn’t immediately take the boa off, either.

Anna tries a fawn-colored cowboy hat, glancing into the big gilt mirror with a diagonal crack set up at the far side of the tent. She catches Ben staring at her with an expression that makes a swooping, fluttering feeling open up somewhere between her chest and her stomach.

They make the loop through the long row of tents, up one side and down the other, until they are back by the busker, who has moved on to a dirge-like rendition of _Crazy In Love_. Anna tosses a pound coin into his guitar case because she sort of likes the guy’s oddball covers the way she sometimes likes really ugly modern art.

Ben touches her arm and then tilts his head towards the ice cream truck in the gravel parking area. “Want one?”

She nods because, sure, why not?

Anna sits on the low stone wall that edges the road and watches him wait in line. She admires how his shoulders look in that jacket and how his neck is lovely but so masculine, before getting distracted by his Adam’s apple, which she’d really like to skim her teeth over.

He wanders back over with two chocolate-dipped cones.

She takes one with a _thanks_ that he shrugs off.

The ice cream melts out from the cracks in the chocolate, which turns finishing the cones into a race against the failing structural integrity of the coating. She watches Ben lick a drip of ice cream off his knuckles and thinks about sucking his fingers into her mouth, curling her tongue around them, and then in the privacy of her own mind drops the pretense of thinking about his fingers.

She wonders what it would feel like, doing that for him. If she’d like it. And then, with a sinking feeling, if maybe she’d be clumsy and awful.

They hadn’t tried anything like that under the star-scattered sky with only the sleeping bag for privacy, though he’d been sweet and careful with her as they’d made the most of the one condom a Swiss girl named Amélie had pressed into her palm that afternoon with a conspiratorial wink once Gus Gus had started flirting.

Anna sneaks another glance at Ben and thinks about bracketing his hips with her hands with a thrilling rush of nerves. She thinks about having time, a bed and being able to see more of him; about how her whole body wants to sway towards him, always, which she has felt with other people, but never quite like this.

She thinks about how easily he could hurt her again and how life doesn’t hand out any guarantees for hearts or people.

Feeling a mishmash of relaxed and on edge, happy and scared and also sort of ridiculous, she takes another meditative lick from her rapidly melting ice cream cone _._

 

 

 

 

The afternoon has slipped into evening by the time they reach Oxford again. The street lights start to flicker on, silhouetted against the inky dark sky. She points out the turns to take for her building, which is just on the other side of the river, and he pulls up outside.

Anna lifts off the helmet, hugging it to her chest rather than handing it back to him.

She cringes a little as Ben takes in her building, sleek-glass modern and moneyed and not at all what she wanted.

“This must be you,” is all he says.

She’d sound crazy if she said, _It is. And isn’t_.

He gets off his bike to walk her up to the entrance.

“Well.” He swings his hands inside the pockets of his jacket and takes a drifting step back.

Anna means to say something like, _thanks. This was fun._ But when she opens her mouth what comes out is, “It’s a long drive back to London. You should get dinner first. With me.”

He looks up with that faint, uneven smile which means he is amused—specifically by her—in a way that could feel mean but somehow never does.

“We can get takeout,” she tries. “I’ll show you my place.”

He raises his eyebrows sharply at that as if to ask, _are you sure you know how that sounds?_

Anna makes a strangled noise of frustration—at him, at the universe and most of all at herself—and then decides, _you know what? This is happening_.

She grabs his hand and tugs him forward, ignoring his _I might have other places to be, you know,_ and pulls him towards the chip-curry-and-Chinese place that’s around the corner.

Ben gives up his grumbling about the time he holds the door open for her. 

Side by side, they stare up at the huge numbered menu hanging above the counter. After that same noticeable blip of hesitation, his hand settles at the small of her back. His touch manages to feel as natural as breathing but also so distracting she can barely think about anything else, let alone which of forty-seven different but equally mediocre dishes she wants to order.

 

 

 

 

They bicker briefly over who pays, but her invitation, her bill and those are the rules.

“But whose rules?” he asks, as they wait for the elevator. The white plastic bag of Chinese food dangles from his hand.

“I don’t know—the generally accepted rules of civilization? Or, at least, of dating in this century.”

He rolls his eyes. “This century? You mean the grand total of five years we’re into this century?”

“Yes.” She stabs the penthouse floor button. “Exactly. Five years is forever.”

She doesn’t know anything about dating. This is all a theory. But the kinds of rom-coms she likes best now have girls doing things like insisting on splitting the check and making no bones about going after the guys they want—and that’s the sort of rom-com she’d like her life to be.

In theory.

 

 

 

 

She calls Weiss with her location (and okay she might pretend to have another call coming in to duck hearing about his annoyance) and then does the strangely awkward shuffle of _this is the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom_ _and the bathroom is over there_. The apartment was furnished when she moved in and feels like a hotel, which is familiar but not homey.

Ben shakes off the beer she holds up but takes a Perrier.

The big glass dining table is way too awkward for two people to eat Chinese takeout at. Instead, she leads him out to the tiny breakfast table on the balcony, which is the spot in her apartment she likes best.

Anna doesn’t bother to get plates, maybe because passing the cartons back and forth reminds her of shared scraped together meals on trains as wildly misidentified countries rolled past outside the window. As they eat, she asks him about London, since the city seems to be the place he thinks of as home. She’s only seen the lobbies of five-star hotels, a handful of the usual tourist spots—with the always quelling addition of a security detail—and the inside of one opera house. She pokes her chopsticks into the dregs of the fluorescently orange sweet-and-sour as she listens. 

The jittery sense of standing on the edge of a high bridge settles over her as she looks at this gorgeous, confusing guy she thinks is probably her boyfriend.

Or could be her boyfriend.

She made the big gesture, after all. They’ve talked on the phone more days than not since she found him again. And he’s here, isn’t he? He showed up and she didn’t even have to ask.

And yet—she doesn’t understand why it feels like, if she tried to reach out with her whole heart again, she’d end up knocking against a pane of glass.

Anna pictures her life of beautiful cages, stretching forward and back in an endless series. Even when she’d thought for an amazing moment she had broken free, it just meant she couldn't see the cage.

Because being safe always counts for more than being happy. 

Maybe if life does something to you long enough, you start doing it to yourself. 

She stares up at the stars that are so much dimmer here than above that makeshift campsite in the middle-of-nowhere, but that look like exactly what she is used to.

“There hasn’t been anyone else since we, you know. In Austria. And you don’t have to tell me, one way or the other! In fact, don’t!” She presses her fingers over his mouth when he starts to say something back, anyway. “Because that was a long time ago and you were totally free to do whatever!”

Who either of them did or didn’t sleep with isn’t the point she trying to get to.

“At first I thought it was because of being watched all the time, like always. I was right back where I started, the most undatable girl in the country. But then I went to college and there were all these cute interesting people everywhere. I could’ve dated or hooked up or whatever.”

His eyebrows draw together at that but he stays quiet, listening.

And this is it. This is the part that is so hard and scary to admit. She pulls her legs up and wraps her arms around her knees, staring out at the scattered lights across the river.

“But what happened, it made me feel like I couldn’t trust anyone. It got stuck somewhere in my head that anyone at any point could be lying to me, even about the big stuff, and I wouldn’t be able to tell. And I couldn’t bear that feeling of a trapdoor opening up under me again. Of being wrong about everything. So I never gave anyone the chance.”

The yellow points of light transform into wavering streaks on the dark surface of the river. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, closing his eyes for a moment, which makes him look younger and a bit lost. “But you weren't wrong about everything. Just the mechanisms that got me there and the why behind some of it—most of it. But not, strictly speaking, everything.” 

She watches him run through all these words that have nothing to do with how he feels and she’s hit with a strange rush of fondness at how hard this is for him, even though it’s still as infuriating as ever. 

“And after you were gone, Anna, I kept thinking back. What would’ve have happened if I told you then, or then, or then.” He makes a small gesture as though marking off points on some invisible timeline between them. “But by the time I could admit to myself that I was in love with you, coming clean would have ruined everything. So I was a coward. And selfish. I told myself it was because I needed to keep you safe. But that was just another lie. I lied to you and lied to myself and everything was ruined in the end regardless.”

“But was it ruined?” she asks, almost more to herself than to him. Because if it was ruined, she couldn’t be here, could she? She’d be back at Harvard in her safe little life.

“How can you trust me?” He looks down at his hands and sharpens the question. “Can you even trust me again?”

He’s starting to tangle everything up in his head until he seems a million miles away from her. She touches his arm and, when he looks over, she kisses him. He kisses her back on reflex, which is a relief, but she can pinpoint when his overthinking mind finally lets go enough to be with her, here and right now, because the kiss shifts from nice enough to _okay wow_ amazing.

Anna pulls back after one last self-indulgent swipe of her tongue against his, “You don’t have any other secret identities? Your videography gig isn’t, like, an MI5 cover?”

“No.”

“Not for high stakes opera-based espionage?”

“That’s not even a thing.”

“Last chance to come clean!”

She giggles as he pulls her onto his lap, moving her with an ease that is incredibly distracting.

He stares up at her, serious and as broken open as she has ever seen him. “I won’t lie to you again.”

Of course, that’s what a liar would say. Anna knows that people are going to smile and lie and always want things from her just because of the name she was born with.

But most really worthwhile things to do in life are at least a little scary. Or a lot scary. She’s lived that and knows it’s true. So she cups the back of his neck, running her hand into his hair, and leans in close to whisper, “I believe you.”

 

 

 

 

Her first time was nice, even eccentrically romantic. But Anna has a theory that sex will be better in a bed with pillows, good lighting and a whole box full of condoms.

Anna is a big believer in testing theories.

 

 

  

 

Later—a lot later—she watches the first silvery line of early morning light peek through the gaps between the beautiful old buildings across the river. She is starting to ache with a half-pleasant soreness—and, okay, yes, she _is_ sweaty and slick and wants to take a shower, only she is never moving from this bed again ever. 

Ben’s arm is wrapped tight around her waist and his face is pressed into her hair, crashed right back to sleep after a dragged-out, drowsy-slow round that she hadn’t even realized sex could be like. 

She listens to him snoring softly and thinks with a giddy rush that her even-better-sex-in-a-bed theory?

Oh, yeah.

That’s been really, really verified.

 

 

 

 

Okay. Maybe she’ll wake him up in a little, though.

Just to be one-hundred percent certain.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [@burberrycanary](http://clktr4ck.com/qcg8).


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